Goodbye Girl and the Big Apple Circus (2006)

$12.00 - CD

 The album was Allen's first solo record and second with producer Don Dixon. Dixon brought Allen down to famed producer Mitch Easter's studio, with whom he had co-produced REM's famed Murmer and Reckoning.  With Dixon on Bass, acclaimed studio drummer Jim Brock rounded up the line-up.  Brock has worked with John Hiatt, John Mellencamp, Joe Walsh, Delbert McClinton, Joan Baez and many more.  It was Allen's fondness of the James McMurtry album Where'd You Hide the Body that spurred Dixon to enlist Brock.  Dixon produced that album, and Brock and he worked as the rhythm section.  In addition to recording the album, Mitch Easter also lent a hand with some guitar and keyboard work.  The album also began Allen's work with singer Marti Jones who sang on the album out-take "Onendego."

The album was picked up by the Amsterdam based label Rosa Records for a European release.   It charted on several Americana Charts during the year of it's release.

"The Story of Gasoline continues on Goodbye Girl and the Big Apple Circus, the solo debut from ex-Rosavelt singer-guitarist Chris Allen. In a hung-over daze, the doomed party boys in his tunes aren't sure where their weekends went wrong or why a string of girls decided to leave them. With the jangling title track and barroom anthem "Tilt-A-Whirl," the disc opens like a Northeast Ohio roots-rock Replacements, winds down into pickled back-bar rock, and descends into blues as the buzz gets harsher. Producer Don Dixon (R.E.M., Marshall Crenshaw) plays bass, sings expertly hoarse backup vocals, and corrals local notables, including bluesman Austin "Walkin' Cane" Charanghat and lead guitarist-longtime bandmate Doug McKean…"

* Voted 'Best Songwriter', Cleveland's Scene Magazine

* One of Scene's Magazine's 'Albums of the Year.'